


Nothing but the candle in the mirror (no visions of the future)

by Avonya



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen, Kind of a character study of all of them, Pre Canon, Third person Klaus POV, because klaus, in some of these they’re kids so, kid klaus, mentions of drug use, non linear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-11-18 20:20:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18126020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avonya/pseuds/Avonya
Summary: (So lost and alone)Klaus has questions for his siblings, always had. Doesn’t mean he always gets clear answers.





	Nothing but the candle in the mirror (no visions of the future)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Great Comet

Klaus throws himself on the couch besides Five one afternoon when they’re young, all still young, and asks him where he goes when he teleports.

Annoyed, Five tells him that he goes where he wants to go.

“What about teleporting do you not understand,” he says, sharply, loudly turning the page of his book.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Klaus responds. He’s thirteen, hasn’t done any of the drugs he does regularly yet, but he’s nearly there. “Takes a second to get there, yeah? So what happens between the two places?”

Five frowns, like it’s something that he’s thought of and still doesn’t know. “I don’t think I go anywhere,” he says, finally, right before Klaus would have given up and gone away if Five hadn’t spoke. “I think I exist in one spot, and then another, and nothing in between.”

“Huh,” Klaus says. He wonders if Five’s thought about that a lot. He wonders if Five is lying to him. “Cool.”

The world declares Five as dead after he’s gone for two weeks, but the family doesn’t.

Vanya tearfully asks Klaus to tell her if Five ever showed up as a ghost, and Klaus promised.

He wasn’t sure if he ever would, though. Klaus wondered if he just disappeared into the in-between.

Or, hell, maybe he time traveled. Maybe Five was living large in the future, having the time of his life.

Klaus hopes he is.

 

•

 

“Hey,” Klaus says. He had gotten picked up by Diego’s cop friend for using, but Diego, the good brother, broke him out.

Not quite. He had told his cop friend to let him go, saying he’d make sure Klaus went home safe, and she relented, but that was the same thing, wasn’t it? Either way, it meant Klaus wasn’t going to jail. Luther wouldn’t have done it. Fuck Luther, Klaus thinks.

Klaus wonders how long Diego’s good nature will last. So far he had managed to get Diego to agree to take him to a diner and pay for the food, so he guessed not much longer.

“What,” Diego grinds out. Parks the car.

“What’s it like to breathe underwater?”

“Like normal breathing,” Diego says shortly. Gets them a table.

“Yeah?” Klaus flashes a wide, charming, smile at the hot waiter who brings them the menus and is rewarded with a wink. He won’t be that guy, never, but maybe he’ll hit him up after he’s done with Diego, before he has to leave.

“Yes,” Diego says, just as shortly as before. “Why do you even want to know?”

“Can’t I be curious?” He asks. He raises his hands defensively, flashing Diego with HELLO and GOODBYE.

He got them done at eighteen, soon as possible. Klaus figured that he was a human ouija board, might as well look like it.

Diego drops it until after they’ve ordered, and they’re pretty much silent, minus little bits of conversation that Klaus and Ben have, until the food comes. Klaus’ food, to be precise, since all Diego ordered was a cup of coffee.

“It feels weird,” he says, finally.

Klaus struggles to remember what Diego was talking about, before nodding wisely.

“Right, right,”

“There’s always a moment between when I’m breathing air, and when I’m breathing water, that I panic in.” He shrugs. “Don’t think I’ll ever be over it, honestly. Human response.”

“That makes sense,” Klaus says. “Bet all of us are writing over basic human reactions with this,” He waves his waffle-covered fork, “weird shit.”

Ben snorts. “That’s an understatement.”

“Hah, true,” Klaus agrees. Diego peers at him, before sighing.

“I gotta take you back to rehab.”

“What? Why?”

“Patch only agreed to let me let you out if i said I took you back. Have any stuff you need to pick up first?”

Klaus rolls his eyes. “Drugs?”

Leaning back, Diego crosses his arms over his chest. He finishes his coffee. “Very funny. Seriously, Klaus, you need to get sober eventually.”

“Maybe when I’m dead,” he says. “Can this wait until after I’m finished?”

“Fine.”

Pretty much every time he runs into Diego, Diego takes him to rehab. He’s been in often enough that all the staff, no matter the shift, know his name.

There’s a saying, something along the lines of, ‘home is where everyone knows your name’. If that’s true, than rehab is home, which is so, so, fucking sad. He doesn’t want to go back.

Klaus resolves to eat as slowly as possible.

 

•

 

Klaus watches Luther watch him while he’s doing his eyeliner.

“What,” he says. “Before you say anything, Allison let me borrow it.”

“Not about the makeup, Klaus,” Luther says. He stands awkwardly against Klaus’ door, arms crossed. He’s bulked out over the years.

Not as much as he will when he comes back from the moon almost as wide as tall, but still. Normal-people amounts of not normal.

“What, then, and hurry, please. I’ve got places to be,”

“I know that. I’m just here to say that, uh, maybe you shouldn’t go. It’s dangerous, and it’s not good for the Academy. And if there’s a mission, and you’re out, or worse, drunk or high or something-“

“You can stop the lecture.” He rolls his eyes, before inspecting his work. Perfect.

Well. Near perfect. Close enough. The line trembled, with the shaking of his hands, but whatever. His dealer’s party wasn’t the fucking Paris fashion show.

“Besides,” Klaus says, standing. “Haven’t been sober for years. Haven’t you noticed, One? Isn’t that your job?” He pulled on his coat, twirled in the mirror.

Luther’s mouth twists into a firm line. “Klaus,” He says, “Dad won’t be happy when he finds out.”

“Like he doesn’t know? You haven’t told him?”

“Well, uh,”

“Right. I’ll be heading out now. See you around, Luther.”

He leaves Luther standing alone in his door frame, and wonders how long he’ll stay there.

 

•

 

Allison sends a nice, formal, wedding invitation to the rehab that Klaus always finds himself ending up in. Good on her, he thinks, for sending it to the right place, because he’s in his final week of that session when the letter arrives.

It’s on fancy paper, thick and cream colored with black and gold lettering. A plane ticket to LA is included, as well as her phone number.

The phone number is written by hand, not printed, and written in code, in case prying eyes see the Famous Allison ‘Three’ Hargreeves’ number. Simple code, just the first letter of each of their names to stand in for their number.

Lucky she doesn’t need any eights or nines, Klaus thinks. He goes, of course.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Allison says, genuinely glad and glowingly radiant in wedding dress.

“Glad you invited me,” He returns. He really is, he really is. “He make you happy?”

She smiles. “He does, Klaus, he really does.”

“Good,” He says. He’s in his finest ratty jacket, looks terrible next to her. He wonders if they still wear the same dress size. “Because if he wasn’t, darling, all it’d take is a phone call and a plane ticket and I’d be out here to beat his ass, don’t worry.”

Allison laughs. She looks tired, almost, and Klaus wonders if it’s because of planning a celebrity wedding or if it’s something more.

“You think you could take him?”

“Of course, Ali, you ever see a crackhead fight?”

She laughs a little before sobering. “Klaus,” she says. “If you ever want to get clean, I’d support you.”

“Maybe for the next wedding,” he says, dismissively. She doesn’t protest.

“Ali,” He says, carefully, “are you using any tricks?”

Allison smooths down her dress with manicured nails. Looks Klaus dead on. “Four,” she says, “when am I not?”

 

•

 

They are children, and Ben is crying. Ben hates his powers too, probably more than Klaus, because unlike Klaus, there weren’t any good moments, no matter how little. There was just pain.

He’s covered in blood after a mission gone right. Ben always ends his missions covered in blood.

Klaus doesn’t need to ask if it hurts. He knows it does.

He helps Mom help Ben to the bath instead. There is nothing else he can do.

 

•

 

Klaus finds the book almost on accident. He’s walking down Main Street, looking for his next fix, when he sees his sister’s face plastered all over a window.

Surprisingly, it’s not Allison.

Vanya wrote a book.

“Cool,” He tells Ben. “That’s good, good for her, being creative and everything,” and he would have kept rambling if he hadn’t actually read the description.

So that’s how it was. Vanya airing all the family’s secrets for everyone to read. He went inside, grabbed a copy, and sat down to read, with Ben over his shoulder.

She talked about all of them. Luther, Allison, Diego, him, Five, Ben. From the living to the lost, in the words of one review. She told the world their powers and their problems that came with it.

‘Klaus,’ she wrote, ‘found out that drugs could make the ghosts quiet when he was fourteen and hasn’t stopped using since.’

Klaus felt that sure, she was dejected or whatever, sure, she was left out as a child, but was it really necessary?

He made his way over to her apartment, Ben following, and waited outside until she came by. Her violin case was over her shoulder, her earbuds were in her ears, and she looked perfectly normal until she sees him. Then she deflates.

“Hey, Klaus,” she says, weakly.

“Hi, Seven. Saw your book,” he says. “Really?”

“I had to,” she says, just as weakly. “Klaus,”

“I thought that we were just going to be fuckups in peace after the Academy was over.” His fist balls and he has to remind himself to relax. Not fighting her, he thinks, Vanya is our sister. Normally we love her.

Ben wants him to fight her, Klaus can tell, but he’s trying to be mature and adult and whatever.

“Klaus,” Vanya says again.

“No explanations?” He asks. “I get that it’s your spite book, but maybe think of how it’ll affect the rest of us? Could have at least given us some of the cut, you know. Need more cash to stop the ghosts with.”

Vanya bites her lip but doesn’t try to say anything.

“Was it worth it?” He asks, and then he leaves.

“Fuck her,” he tells Ben, angrily, as he walks away. “I’m going to take her off my emergency contacts list.”

At least the book brings him something— some people recognize him and give him drugs for free.

He guessed that in a way she was giving him a cut. Whatever.

 

•

 

Klaus looks in a puddle that’s forming in an alley from water dripping off of a roof. He drops a foot in, kicks up some ripples.

Thinks about his siblings, One through Seven. Thinks about Mom and Pogo.

Thinks about the alley.

Wonders if he’s happy.

Thinks about when he’ll get his next hit.

Leans back, face up, and feels the rain come down.  

**Author's Note:**

> This is,,,, minimally edited so if any of y’all see something tell me. Also remember that I love and cherish every comment, so leave some!
> 
> EDIT: I realized a made a mistake that effects the meaning so I changed it! Also that none of my italics carried over but :/ whatever


End file.
